Phoning It In From ETel - Radio Handi Makes Its Debut (Updated)

by Brian McConnell

This week at Etel, I'll be demoing a new conferencing and telecasting platform built from the ground up around open standards telephony. Among other things, we'll be hosting a live feed of the plenary sessions that will be accessible via a local phone call in over 30 countries, and worldwide via Gizmo.

Radio Handi enables people to create voice communities around any subject, place of interest or peer group, and to telecast live audio from MP3 feeds or conference phones. You can create a message board and party line for your club, for people who share an interest, or for your friends. With it, you can create an open party line that people can dial into from all over the world (30+ countries and 1 VoIP network to start with, much more to come). This is our first public demo of the platform.

It's also a great platform for ad hoc broadcasting. Just hook a microphone up to a Mac running Gizmo, and you can beam a live audio feed into a conference room that people can then dial into from all over the world (watch for a series of how-tos on ad hoc telecasting and other topics later this week).

Couldn't make it to ETel? We'll have an open feed running Wednesday and Thursday so people can dial in to eavesdrop on the conference proceedings, and also chat with attendees. We'll be hosting message boards and party lines for BOF sessions and informal groups, and may also have a mobile MP3 feed running as well. This is a demo with limited call capacity, so you may get a busy signal or choppy audio. We'll be telecasting sessions Wednesday and Thursday, and will post details here soon.

UPDATE: live audio from the main stage is available at 415-376-1644 (see www.radiohandi.com for a list of international access numbers, just pick an access number and then join channel 0028, or call "radiohandi" on Gizmo and dial channel 0028).

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